devil!" muttered Lord Turfleigh. "Hard lines on him, eh,
Angleford?"

"Yes," said Drake gravely.

"Then, as I understand it," said Lord Wolfer, "your life, the salvation
of the countess' jewels, and the capture of the burglar are due to this
lady?"

"That is so," assented Drake quietly.

"Who is she? What is her name?" asked several men, in a breath.

There was a pause, during which Burden listened breathlessly.

"Her name is Lorton," said Drake, very quietly. "She is staying at the
south lodge."

Burden started and bit her lip. Lorton? Where had she heard----

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Lord Wolfer. "You don't mean that Miss Lorton
who was with us?"

Drake nodded.

"The same," he said gravely.

Burden's lips twitched, and her hands gripped the edge of the door frame.

There was silence for a moment, then one of the men asked:

"And what do you think the fellow will get, Angleford?"

"It all depends," replied Drake, after a pause. "If this fellow Falconer
should die----Well, it will be murder. If not--and God grant he may
not!--it will be burglary simply, and it will mean penal servitude for
so many years."

"And serve him right, whichever way it goes!" cried one of the men.
"Anyway, this young lady, this Miss Lorton, is a brick! Here's her
health!"

Burden waited for no more. She was white still, but she was trembling no
longer. Her eyes were glowing savagely, and her lips were strained
tightly. Her sweetheart was captured; he would either be hanged or
sentenced to penal servitude; and Miss Lorton was the person with whom
she had to reckon!

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Before morning Falconer became delirious. He did not rave nor shout, but
he talked incessantly, with his eyes wide open and fixed vacantly, and
his long hand plucking at the bedclothes. Nell stole in from her room,
though she had promised to rest and leave the night duty to the village
nurse, and, sitting beside him, held his hand.

At the touch of her cool fingers he became quiet for a moment or two,
and something like a smile crossed his pain-lined face; but presently he
began again. Sometimes he was back at the Buildings, and he hummed a bar
or two of music while his fingers played on the counterpane as if it
were a piano. Once or twice he murmured her name in a tone which brought
the color to Nell's face and made her heart ache. But it did not need
the whisper of her name to tell her Falconer's secret. She knew that he
loved her,